In some conventional storage systems and/or applications, it is necessary to store data on storage devices such as hard disks or removable storage drives in an encrypted format. Upon retrieving the stored encrypted data from the storage device, the data has to be decrypted before it may be utilized. Accordingly, encryption and decryption keys are provided to encrypt and decrypt the data. For example, in personal computers (PCs,) data may be encrypted prior to being stored on a hard disk and decrypted after being read from the hard disk. However, the encryption/decryption keys which are utilized are often stored on paper or in a person's memory.
Particularly in PCs, separate devices called adapters may be utilized to provide connectivity between a storage device and a host system. For example, an ATA host adapter which may be integrated within the PC may be provided in order to connect a hard disk to the PC. The adapter may be referred to as a hard disk controller or a peripheral controller. ATA stands for AT Attachment, a standardized interface used by storage devices such as hard disk drives, CD drives and DVD drives. ATA compatible drives or storage devices may also be referred to as integrated drive electronics (IDE) drives. Notwithstanding, these adapters are primarily utilized to provide connectivity for storage devices or peripheral devices.
Accordingly, one drawback with conventional storage devices or systems is that the data stored on a storage device is not securely stored and therefore, data integrity may easily be compromised. Furthermore, although some storage devices and systems may provide various methods for encrypting stored information, the encryption keys that are utilized may be easily accessible and compromised. Additionally, existing data storage methodologies are mostly platform specific and therefore, not readily ported to other platforms and/or systems. This can be problematic in network attached remote storage systems, for example, where data integrity must be maintained as data traverses from one system component to another system component. Furthermore, certain disastrous events may either totally destroy stored data integrity and/or totally compromise the security of the data when recreating or restoring the data.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.